Wayne County Benny Napoleon went on the attack Tuesday night in the final debate in Detroit’s race for mayor, calling into question Mike Duggan’s campaign mantra that he turned around the Detroit Medical Center and suggesting Duggan can’t follow through on the plans he touts.

There were testy moments throughout the debate as Napoleon sought to fight back perceptions that the race is all but over and a shoe-in for Duggan, the former DMC chief who has led significantly in polls since he won the city’s August primary as a write-in candidate.

Napoleon cited a litany of allegations against Duggan’s celebrated turnaround of the once nearly bankrupt DMC, saying it wouldn’t have happened without loans, layoffs and union busting. He called the tale of Duggan’s tenure at the DMC “a fallacy.”

“Admit it,” he said in a challenge to Duggan.

Duggan replied: “I don’t believe you even said that. There are some things you’re going to regret when this campaign is over.” Duggan later clarified that he only meant Napoleon would feel bad for saying something untrue, and not as a personal threat to Napoleon in any way.

There were other digs, too.

Napoleon suggested Duggan wouldn’t be able to seize abandoned houses as mayor as he did when he was Wayne County prosecutor, turning them over at low cost to new owners who would fix them up. Napoleon also said it was disingenuous for Duggan to suggest he’d be able to get the city’s streetlights working again as mayor because the city’s lighting department is now under the control of a lighting authority, not the mayor.

“You’re dead wrong,” Duggan responded.

Napoleon accused the news media of being “grossly unfair” in portraying Duggan positively during the campaign while ignoring substantive criticism of him.

“They have forgotten everything they have ever written about Mike Duggan — bribes, fraud, kickbacks, no-bid contracts, ghost employees. Mike’s just not right for Detroit,” Napoleon said in closing remarks, without elaborating.

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Napoleon also said big business and big money is buying the race and trying to buy votes through its heavy donations favoring Duggan.

While Duggan has never shied away from touting the support he has from major downtown business elites, he has fought the perception that he’s a product of the legacy of the late Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara, whose administration was dogged by federal investigations of contract cronyism and improper campaign donations.

Duggan denied his opponent’s allegations and has insisted for years that he was never a target of the federal investigations, noting that the U.S. attorney at the time said as much. Duggan has never been charged with any wrongdoing and has said, over the years, that everything he’s done has been legal, within the rules of campaign finance and covered extensively by the news media.

Tuesday’s was a bruising debate compared with the other two that were far tamer.

Duggan told reporters afterward that he expected Napoleon to go on the offensive. Duggan conceded that Napoleon had a strong performance Tuesday night but labeled the allegations Napoleon made as “desperate” acts by a candidate trailing way behind the front-runner. A Tuesday Free Press/WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) poll showed Duggan leading among likely voters 50%-26%. The election is Tuesday.

“You get desperate when a campaign’s not going well, and you say things you don’t mean, and I have no doubt that he’s going to feel badly about it in a week or two,” Duggan said after the debate.

But Napoleon was sticking by his attacks, saying the news media has ignored his major endorsements while Duggan gets more coverage for lesser accomplishments. He said he has made allegations about Duggan’s turnaround of the DMC before, saying, “Everything I said was true.”

But Napoleon didn’t deny that he had been saving up a more than a small amount of criticism for Duggan, calling it “tactics” to help raise support among voters. He insisted that his own internal polling shows a much closer race.

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“This city needs strong leadership,” he told reporters after the debate. “It needs leadership that’s willing to take on (emergency manager) Kevyn Orr, take on the governor, take on Lansing. Everybody wants to talk about being conciliatory. We’ve tried to be conciliatory. Look at what Mayor (Dave) Bing did and what’s happened to him. They made him irrelevant. I’m not going to be irrelevant as the mayor of the City of Detroit. I’m going to fight for this city.”

Both candidates otherwise stuck to campaign themes they’ve followed throughout the campaign. Duggan has consistently played up his role as a turnaround master who brought back the DMC from the brink of bankruptcy and restored fiscal health to deficit-plagued Wayne County government.

Both men have had careers in the public spotlight, with Napoleon a longtime lawman who served as Detroit’s police chief under former Mayor Dennis Archer, and Duggan serving in government roles under McNamara and later as Wayne County prosecutor.

Napoleon opened the debate by thanking Duggan for taking down a TV ad run by a pro-Duggan political action committee not directly controlled by the candidate. The ad alleges Napoleon had a strong role in the failed downtown Wayne County jail project, while Napoleon insists he was never in charge of it, laying blame for its failure at the feet of Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano’s administration.

Both pledged to run honest, clean governments. Both said they would make crime fighting and blight removal a priority. They agreed it was important to make sure businesses owned by Detroiters, minorities and women get a fair share of city contracts.

Both said they would fight any efforts to cut city pensions, as Orr has suggested is likely in Detroit’s bankruptcy proceedings to get the city out from under $18 billion in debts. Duggan said he would oppose any plans to do so in bankruptcy court, while Napoleon less specifically said he would do whatever it takes so that pensions are protected. Both said they would be advocates for youth programs.